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Gaza Strip can stir debate here in Jacksonville

Rabbi, Palestinian offer different views on Mideast violence

Rabbi Shmuli Novack addresses the two dozen people who came to pray for Israel on Sunday, July 13, 2014, in Jacksonville. Rabbi Shmuli Novack, director of Chabad of Southside, recently returned from Israel and called for an urger gathering to pray for the welfare of the country and it's people.

The remnants of a rocket fired over Israel in Kfar Chabad. Jacksonville Rabbi Shmuli Novack was in the town when rocket sirens sounded.

Jacksonville Rabbi Shmuli Novack and his family gather in a bomb shelter in Kfar Chabad, Israel, while rocket sirens sound.

As his last full day in Israel came to an end and the sun began to set, chicken breasts, kabobs and hot dogs sizzling on a grill, Jacksonville Rabbi Shmuli Novack heard a siren, and overhead, he saw what looked like a shooting white star.

Novack’s been to Israel before, and the nation is never far removed from conflict, but he’d never heard an air-raid siren before. He also had never seen a rocket like that before.

On July 8, the first official day of the Israeli air attacks, Novack, rabbi at Chabad Southside, held onto two of his sons. Farther away in the park, his wife, born and raised there, held onto two more of their children.

Israel later invaded the Gaza Strip and began targeting tunnels it suspected were used to traffic arms to Hamas, the Palestinian resistance movement in control of the Gaza Strip that has been battling with Israel for decades. As the conflict has grown more serious — about 300 deaths suffered by the Palestinians and two from the Israelis, as of Friday — the effects of Israel’s and Gaza’s attacks on each other have been felt as far away as here in Jacksonville.

John Rukab, whose Palestinian parents and grandparents came to America from the West Bank, visited there just a couple weeks before Novack.

Unlike in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank doesn’t experience anywhere near the same kind of conflict. The West Bank is governed by the Palestinian Authority. The West Bank hasn’t experienced the economic turmoil the Gaza Strip has, and it hasn’t endured the same kind of devastating violence.

Rukab said he didn’t have trouble while in the West Bank from June 14-28. In fact, he said he felt safer there than in downtown Jacksonville at night.

On the other hand, the Gaza Strip, he said, “it’s kind of an open-air prison where they can’t get in and get out.

“Anybody with any type of compassion for human rights,” Rukab said, “is going to be concerned for innocent people, civilians — even if they say they don’t target civilians, when you’re in such a densely populated area, it’s almost inevitable that you’re going to hit civilians.”

He said the only answer is for Israel to let Palestine be an independent state with free control over the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. If Israel would do that, he said, then Hamas wouldn’t need to attack.

“I would hope that there’s a peaceful, diplomatic solution to any of the problems, not just in Palestine but anywhere in the world,” he said. “The loss of a human life is something that can’t be replaced. … It seems like every time you’re close to peace, something blows up and you get pushed back.

“The people in Gaza or the Palestinian people, anybody in the world, I think you just want to live your life, live a normal life where you’re not under someone’s thumb or someone’s control. I don’t think anybody wants to be violent. I think they’re driven to violence.”

Because Israel has clamped down on Gaza, he said, Hamas has a “God-given right to resist,” comparing it to the American Revolutionary War.

“They’re being oppressed and they’re in this prison. They don’t have food, and they don’t have medicine, and they don’t have water and electricity,” Rukab said. “I’m sure a lot of Israelis’ views would change when [they] see what kind of conditions [Gazans] live under.”

Rabbi Novack said there’s no excuse for Hamas purposely firing rockets at civilians.

“It shook me to reality that there are people who just sent a missile and it was right above my head,” he said. “These are people who are sending rockets to kill innocent men, women and children who are just trying to have a day in the park. You cannot rationalize or excuse indiscriminate rocket fire at civilians, period.”

That night, he had to pack their luggage in between air-raid sirens calling his family into a shelter.

“You hear something in the news about terror,” he said, “but when you’re sitting in a bomb shelter, everything becomes a lot more vivid.”

He said he doesn’t have the answers and he doesn’t presume to know how to stop the conflict.

“It’s very tragic that we have to have these discussions,” he said. “This is medieval stuff, and it’s not something that we should be having to deal with. … Hamas is a terror organization whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the Jews. You can’t come to the table with people whose relentless objective is your absolute destruction, yet Israel continues to come to the table.”

He said he chooses to believe people who support Hamas don’t realize Hamas’ tactics. “You’re waving a flag of a terrorist group that has killed Americans and Israelis,” he said.

When Hamas sends rockets to Israel, he said, Israel has a right to strike back.

“There are answers I don’t know. But I do know we have a responsibility to defend our children and defend our communities.”